trailer break: ‘The Baader Meinhof Complex’

Yeah, the trailer is in German, with no subtitles, but you kind of don’t need them. If you want, though, there’s a different trailer aimed at English-speaking audiences at the official British site for the film. It’s not as sexy as this one, though: it calls these fun-loving wags “Europe’s most notorious terrorists.” The German trailer, on the other hand, makes it look pretty cool to have been a radical turned violent revolutionary.

(I wish that British trailer was embeddable, because it’s so very different from this one. Comparing them side by side is a fascinating look at how one product — a single movie — can be sold in such different ways.)

The film is based on a nonfiction book about Germany’s Red Army Faction, which did a lot of naughty things — assassinations, blowing up VW Beetles, that kind of stuff — in the 1960s and 70s. And it’s from the same folks who gave us the last-days-of-Hitler drama Downfall, which could have been all mushy about the Fuhrer — I mean, what, we’re supposed to feel sorry that he killed himself in that bunker, or what? — but of course never went anywhere near there. The British critics seem to like this one, at least.

Oooh! I’ve always been obsessed with the Red Army Faction. How in one era a group that fights a government they see as fascist can be hailed as brave resistance members and in another era they are seen as terrorists.

Anyway, have you seen the german filme Mariane & Julianne (Bleierne Zeit) it is by feminist film maker Margarethe von Trotta about two sisters, loosely based on the story of RAF founder Gudrun Enslin and her sister Christiane…it’s really good.